Sara Lee Bakery Group, St. Louis, has launched new Quick 'n Easy™ cake batter in a ready-to-use format. Packaged in a 1-lb, 3.5-oz standup, Doyn-style, gusseted film pouch, the premade batter comes in Chocolate and Yellow varieties and makes 12 cupcakes or one layer cake. All the consumer has to do is open the pouch, squeeze the batter into a cake pan and spread the batter evenly. The pouch has two cutoff options, depending on the end product. The user can cut across the entire top to squeeze out the product for a layer cake or cut off the top corner to pour into cupcake tins. Unlike other ready-to-bake cake kits, this one is not a dry mix but is sold in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, next to the cookie dough. Only available in select test markets (PD spotted the batter products in a Chicago-area supermarket), the innovative squeeze-and-bake batter could be the first of its kind in the U.S., though refrigerated pour-and-bake cake batters have been winding their way through Europe, PD is told. Further product and packaging specifics are considered proprietary at the moment, says Sara Lee, which as of presstime, was still watching the product's market activity to see if it would expand distribution.
